Cultural historian [Jean] Gebser […] theorised that five structures of consciousness developed throughout human history, calling them archaic, magic, mythical, mental, and integral (emerging). Gebser, Steiner, and Wilber also claimed that time consciousness changed with the evolving consciousness of humans throughout history.

The shift from magic to mythical consciousness paralleled the shift from nomadic life to settled agricultural villages and the world’s first cities […]

Gebser calls the time consciousness of this mythical period ‘rhythmic/cyclical.’ [Eleanora] Masini agrees, referring to the cyclical time perspectives found in the mythological narratives of Buddhist and Hindu cultures.

Gebser and others place the origins of mental-rational consciousness in the ancient Greek period of the great philosophers [and] refer to the beginnings of the concept of linear time in this period, and by association, the beginnings of the default idea of the future that we have today.

Masini’s linear time concept also originated in the Graeco-Roman era and is symbolised by an arrow.

It later came to represent progress in the modern period of scientific and technological development. She also points to the erosion of the idea that linear time is always associated with progress, in the wake of the Club of Rome Limits to Growth Report in the 1970s.

The fifth type of consciousness, which Gebser called integral, began to appear with the Renaissance and is gradually strengthening in individuals and culture through advances in sciences, philosophy, human rights. It parallels the development of higher models of reasoning, identified by developmental psychologists. Gebser’s integral consciousness, being the most highly evolved, is associated with the most highly evolved time consciousness. Gebser calls this ‘time freedom’ or ‘concretion of time’ in which we are capable of experiencing all the different cultural time senses, rather than being restricted to only one.

Masini’s most evolved time consciousness is symbolised by the spiral, which is an integration of the circle and the arrow, and draws on the work of systems scientist and consciousness researcher Ervin László.

Although the
conception of time and the future exist universally, they are understood
in different ways in different societies. Eleonora Masini (1996, p. 76) argues that there are
three main representations of time. The first representation is:

"A variation of cyclical
motion, as in the enclosed circle of life and death in
living organisms, or of night and day in cosmic time. This representation is
well reflected in the Hindu and Buddhist 'cosmic eras' (kalpa) which are
delimited by mythological events in time periods through which all beings
continue ad infinitum. The cycle is represented by a snake.

In this conception
we see the future as part of an unending continuum. The future is part of life
and death. Naturally this influences one's perspective of the future: there is
little reason to despair or to strive to achieve."

The second representation is based on the Graeco
–
Roman and the Judaeo
–
Christian
conception of time:

"Founded on the idea that all people are the same in relation to God. Time
is
perceived to be a trajectory towards something more, towards
accomplishment. In this representation time is symbolized by an arrow; the
future is better than the present and the past and may be in contradiction to the
historical present, as in utopia. The possibility of the future being worse than
the past or present is out of the question.

This is the conceptual base of progress . . . the time of scientific and technological development, where
every success has to be bigger and better than anything in
the past or present .
. . (but) this concept of time and the future is being challenged by
environmental barriers and barriers emerging from its own frame of reference."

The third representation has been developed by ―Vico and others and was more
recently extended by Ervin Laszlo. According to this representation:

"Time is a spiral, an evolutionary process of world civilization giving a
structure to spatial and temporal events ranging from the natural
to the social,
that develops over time."

These three basic metaphors for time
—
circle, arrow and spiral
—
influence the type of
futures thinking and the very understanding of the future across cultures.

The law of octaves explains why there are no straight lines in nature.

At
the moment of the retardation of vibration a deviation from the
original direction takes place.

Let us assume that a movement begins at
"do". It will continue in a straight line through "mi". But a deviation
occurs between "mi" and "fa" which causes a change from the original
direction. From "fa" through "si", the movement continues in the new
direction. Between "si" and "do" the second interval occurs which causes
a new change in direction.

The next octave gives an even more marked
deviation so that the line of octaves may eventually complete a circle.

[...] we have plunged down a cataract of progress which sweeps us on into the future with ever wilder violence the further it takes us from our roots.

[...] it is the loss of connection with the past, our uprootedness, which has given rise to the "discontents" of civilisation and to such a flurry and haste that we live more in the future and its chimerical promises of a golden age than in the present [...]

[...] reforms by advances, that is, by new methods or gadgets, are of course impressive at first, but in the long run they are dubious and in any case dearly paid for. They by no means increase the contentment or happiness of people on the whole. Mostly they are deceptive sweetenings of existence, like speedier communications which unpleasantly accelerate the tempo of life and leave us with less time than ever before [...]

There are many planes of Being — many sub-planes of Life — many degrees of existence in the Universe. And all depend upon the advancement of beings in the scale, of which scale the lowest point is the grossest matter, the highest being separated only by the thinnest division from the spirit of the All.

And, upward and onward along this Scale of Life, everything is moving. All are on the Path, whose end is The All.

All progress is a Returning Home.

All is Upward and Onward, in spite of all seemingly contradictory appearances.

[...] This Involuntary stage of Creation is sometimes called the "Outpouring" of the Divine Energy, just as the Evolutionary state is called the "Indrawing." The extreme pole of the Creative process is considered to be the furthest removed from the All, while the beginning of the Evolutionary stage is regarded as the beginning of the return swing of the pendulum of Rhythm — a "coming home" idea being held in all of the Hermetic Teachings.

[...] The Hermetic Teachings regarding the process of Evolution are that, the All, having meditated upon the beginning of the Creation — having thus established the material foundations of the Universe — having thought it into existence — then gradually awakens or rouses from its Meditation and in so doing starts into manifestation the process of Evolution, on the material, mental and spiritual planes, successively and in order.

Thus the upward movement begins — and all begins to move Spiritward. Matter becomes less gross; the Units spring into being; the combinations begin to form; Life appears and manifests in higher and higher forms; and Mind becomes more and more in evidence — the vibrations constantly becoming higher. In short, the entire process of Evolution, in all of its phases, begins, and proceeds according to the established Laws of the "Indrawing" process.

Oh, if only it were possible to find understanding," Joseph exclaimed.

"If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness.

Isn't there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?"

The master had never heard him speak so fervently. He walked on in silence for a little, then said:

"There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend.

Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The diety is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught. Be prepared for conflicts, Joseph Knecht - I can see that they already have begun.

It's true that biology and theoretical physics have brought us some fascinating knowledge about the origins of life and the formation of the universe. But does knowing such things help us elucidate the basic mechanisms of happiness and suffering?

It's important not to lose sight of the goals that we set ourselves. To know the exact shape and dimensions of the Earth is undeniably progress. But whether it's round or flat doesn't make a great deal of difference to the meaning of existence. Whatever progress is made in medicine, we can only temporarily treat sufferings that never stop coming back, and culminate in death.

We can end a conflict, or a war, but there will always be more, unless people's minds change.

Modern man likes the word progress. I think contemporary people are still dragging that idea around. It is easy to accept that logic which proposes a diagram of "progress," progress with stages rising in a line.

On this point, Jungian ideas are pretty flexible, while Buddhism is utterly open. There is no first and last, no beginning or end. Buddhism shows us the world of everything as it is, as a whole.

The oft-repeated doctrine of a progressive development of mankind to an ever higher perfection, or generally of any kind of becoming by means of the world-process, is opposed to the a priori view that, up to any given point of time, an infinite time has already elapsed, and consequently that all that is supposed to come with time is bound to have existed already.

Debt is only required of systems built around the demand for growth,
and that is where our current capitalist system has failed. Constant
growth without end, and without any thought to the preservation of
resources, is simply and wholly unsustainable.

Our
current economy is built around the stock markets, and those markets
demand never-ending growth at all costs. If your company cannot promise
growth from one quarter to the next, and the next, and the next, then
you go bankrupt when all of your investors flee to someone that can give
them what they want - free money with no expenditure of work and no
productivity. The only thing that keeps a system like ours running is
more and more debt, and a system like that will always eventually fail.

What
we are seeing now is the last gasps of an empire desperately trying to
keep the illusion of prosperity going. Going into debt is not prosperity
because it is a form of slavery.

[...] I came to live here where I am now between Wounded Knee Creek
and Grass Creek. Others came too, and we made these little gray houses
of logs that you see, and they are square. It is a bad way to live, for
there can be no power in a square.

You have noticed
that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that this is because
the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to
be round.

[...] The life of a man is a circle from
childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.
Our tepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set
in a circle, the nation's hoop, a nest of many nests, where the Great
Spirit meant for us to hatch our children.

In his introduction to the 1979 edition of his novel Pig Earth –
the first in a trilogy chronicling the decline of peasant life in
Europe in the 20th century – John Berger makes a distinction between
what he calls a ‘culture of progress’ and a ‘culture of survival.’

The culture of survival [...] is the culture of the peasantry,
of indigenous people; of pre-modernity. It is the culture of the great
majority of human history, and of many people still, and it is
exemplified for Berger by the French peasantry he still lives among. A
culture of survival does not have an end goal; it just is. Its purpose
is to live from day to day and year to year. It is a repeating pattern.

The end goal of the culture of progress, meanwhile, is at its grandest
the abolition of death itself.

For this goal, the destruction of
traditional ways of being and seeing, and much of the world’s wild
beauty, is a sacrifice worth making.

From the days of the early Greeks we have been seeking the certainty that lies in what could be called closure.

Closure implies that final world that brings discussion to its conclusion; it is a wrapping up, a resolution of the great questions of the universe, an ending of time. But this is also the sort of ending beloved of Victorian novelists in which all conflicts are finally resolved, warring parties united, loving couples married and the wrong-doers punished. Although life may go on after the novel's ending it is a life without conflict or tension.

While post-modern stories can no longer afford this luxury some scientists still believe that the story told by science can reach an ultimate conclusion through its laws, a conclusion in which time is finally blotted out.

Truth, however, may be of a very different order from timeless stasis for it may require a search for what is straight rather than what is static.

[Quinlan] Terry's universe is one in which, at a certain point (in some long-gone
Golden Age) "they got it right" and we can only keep repeating that
cosmic "rightness" forever.

Unfortunately, many rock musicians are stuck
in the same belief -- nothing can ever top "Pet Sounds" or whatever.
It's a tragic belief for the medium involved, because it deprives
practitioners, instantly, of any motivation to be inventive or
innovative.

[Momus]

Terry's classicism is more than just modernism in reverse. It's a
completely alternate point of view, and one just as defensible as
modernism, I think.

Classicists feel a responsibility to the Past,
while modernists feel a responsibility to the Future, both forgetting
that neither the past nor the future really exists, only the present.